VA DODGING BUDGET CUTS, BUT NOT VETS

Housing, mental health and issues not handled by VA subject to sequester fallout

WASHINGTON 
One federal department stands conspicuously protected from the automatic budget cuts falling across the government: the Department of Veterans Affairs with its 300,000 employees and $140 billion budget, a mammoth agency second in size only to the Defense Department.

The exemption, carved out in the 2011 legislation establishing the cuts, reflected rare bipartisan agreement in Washington that the VA should be spared the threatened budget turmoil.

But while the VA is protected from the budgetary ax known as sequestration, veterans aren’t.

Programs supporting veterans — on issues from housing to mental health — operated by agencies other than the VA are subject to the cuts.

They include the Department of Labor’s VETS job-training program, which was being revamped and has been touted by the Obama administration as a key weapon in reducing high unemployment among post-9/11 era veterans. In February, that unemployment rate was 9.4 percent, higher than the overall rate of 7.7 percent.

Acting Labor Secretary Seth Harris said last month about 55,000 veterans and 44,000 service members wouldn’t receive employment and other transition assistance to help them find civilian jobs because of sequestration; Labor officials now say the exact numbers aren’t known but will amount to “tens of thousands.” In addition, the department said, cuts to the Jobs for Veterans state grants program will mean an estimated 33,000 fewer veterans will be served.

A program using Housing and Urban Development vouchers credited with reducing the number of homeless veterans by 17 percent since 2009 will be harmed, officials warn. While the vouchers are exempt, administrative funding is being cut, which HUD fears will have a “serious effect” on the number of local housing authorities willing to accept the vouchers because they would have to make up the deficit, said Sandra Henriquez, assistant secretary for public housing.

Moreover, many Defense Department programs that support veterans, wounded service members and their families aren’t exempt. The number of mental health counselors assisting service members returning from combat zones with issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder may be cut, Gen. Raymond Odierno, the Army chief of staff, told Congress last month.

Forty percent of the Defense Department’s medical providers working at military hospitals and clinics are civilians subject to furlough.

Even deceased veterans may face longer waits. The Army has warned sequestration cuts will increase the already lengthy, month-or-more waiting time for burial at Arlington National Cemetery, with the number of daily burials expected to drop from 31 to 24.

Veterans make up 44 percent of the Defense Department’s 800,000 civilian employee workforce, which may face furloughs starting in April.